Suspect in NIU student's slaying appears in court

The man charged with fatally shooting a Northern Illinois University student at an off-campus party last week made a first and very brief appearance in court this morning.

DeKalb County Judge Robbin Stuckert set another hearing for Dec. 7 to hear a motion to reduce Chaz Thrailkill's $3 million bail. No new details of the slaying emerged.

Police say Thrailkill, 19, of south suburban Markham, got into an argument with Steven Agee Jr., 22, of Park Forest shortly after 2 a.m. Wednesday at an apartment complex in the 800 block of Edgebrook Drive. "Words were exchanged between the victim and the suspect. During that exchange, the victim was shot," DeKalb Police Chief Bill Feithen told a news conference.

Thrailkill was arrested around 11 a.m., about nine hours after the shooting. He was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm.

Feithen said the suspect is not an NIU student but "was visiting a friend in DeKalb." He credited "friends and witnesses" with helping police track down Thrailkill, including some of the dozens of people who were at the party.

Agee was a senior majoring in sociology who already had a job offer lined up in San Diego. His parents had planned to pick him up this morning for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“I just lost my baby boy. That's it,” his father Steven Agee Sr. told the Tribune. “And now there will be no more holidays with him, not even this one coming now.

“You send your kid off to college and what happens," Agee Sr. said. "You hear about these shootings all the time, but you never think it'll happen to you.”

Steven was the youngest of the Agee's two sons and had graduated from Thornwood High School in South Holland.

Agee Jr. had already secured a job offer in San Diego, and was called in for a second job interview with a company in Tinley Park, according to his mother, Kimberly.

“I’m just numb,” she said, sighing deeply.

Kimberly Agee said her son, in his own way, had prepared her in case he left the area for a job after he graduated.

“He asked me to stop babying him,” she recalled. “(He said) he was grown and graduating from college and just let him make his transition from childhood to adulthood and to just let him and stop holding on to him so tight.”